Family Well-Being Across the Globe

posted by Jillian Gilchrest | 4sc
January 22, 2013

For the first time, data are available on family well-being across high and low income countries around the world. The World Family Map Project, a new initiative from Child Trends, acting in partnership with a number of foundations, nongovernmental organizations, and universities, has established measures of well-being based on the role that family plays in the lives of women, men, and children.

The World Family Map Project is a response to the urgent need to map trends in family life across the globe, with a special focus on the consequences of these trends for children. The world family indicators include, family structure, family socioeconomics, family process, and family culture.

Some interesting findings include:

Although two-parent families are becoming less common, they still constitute a majority of families around the globe. Children are most likely to live in two-parent families in Asia and the Middle East, and somewhat less likely to live in two-parent families in the Americas, Europe, Oceania, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The percentage of 15-year-olds who eat meals with their families regularly varies widely throughout the world, ranging from 62 percent in Israel to 94 percent in Italy.

In the majority of countries, most adults believe that working mothers can establish just as good relationships with their children as stay-at-home mothers can.